so you were never a saint, and i've loved in shades of wrong
by stolethekey
Summary: a collection of one-shots based on tumblr prompts
1. even as i disappear from view

**you will always be in front of me, even as I disappear from view**

_from natasharomanoff: if you're still taking those soft angst starter prompts, i'd love to read your take on "you've never hurt me. ever"_

He says it on a Tuesday night, a mumble in the darkness that she almost misses.

"You've never hurt me. Ever."

_That's not true_, she wants to say, but his breath is hot against her skin and his hands are steady against her back, so she lets the words die in her throat even as the regret starts to work its way into her stomach.

It's not true, but he's still here, and maybe that's more important, anyway.

Natasha Romanoff doesn't make promises – but that night, she makes a decision.

_You've never hurt me. Ever._

Never again.

It is a fairly easy resolution to maintain, especially when it becomes just the two of them and Sam. They have more freedom, more leeway, and even though their situation is objectively depressing she can't help but feel a sense of exhilaration as they jump from motel to motel.

There is a fleeting moment, one day in London, where she glances up after the last guard slumps underneath her to see Steve looking at her with pure, unadulterated adoration in his eyes and she thinks she might even be _happy_. The realization is as terrifying as it is life-affirming.

_You've never hurt me. Ever._

She grins at him, makes a snarky comment, and they head down the corridor.

Natasha doesn't quite know when or how it happens, but somewhere along the line it becomes clear that the best way for her to not hurt him is to stay.

So she stays, through three years of cycling through disguises and scavenging for food in dark alleyways. She stays, through the nights they both wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, him screaming with tears streaming down his face and her with her heart pounding and her jaw clenched shut like her life depends on it.

She stays, through no choice of her own, as she watches her friends disintegrate into ash mere feet in front of her. The anguish in her heart is dulled only slightly by the sharp relief she feels as she sprints around a tree to see him kneeling in the dirt.

Neither of them gets snapped. Neither of them says it, but there are times they wish they had been.

They find solace for a while, in each other and in a sheer determination to fix things, and as they both bury their grief and pain into making plans to kill Thanos she is thankful that she does not have to do this alone.

Then they kill Thanos, and it means nothing. The hopeless despair that starts to work its way into Natasha's heart is familiar to her, even if she hasn't felt it in over a decade, but it is completely and utterly foreign to Steve.

She doesn't know how to help him, and he only shakes his head when she tells him she wishes she could.

"You're here, and that's enough," he says, even though she knows that's not true.

_You've never hurt me. Ever._

It's not enough, but maybe it's all she can give him.

And maybe that's why she becomes almost frantic when Scott shows up, spouting ostensibly insane theories about time machines and time travel. Maybe that's why she takes everyone to Tony, to Bruce, why she starts spending her free time reading physics textbooks. It's _definitely_ why she doesn't tell Steve about the uneasiness that worms its way into her gut during Nebula's soul stone session.

Nobody else feels it – she can tell. When she volunteers for the soul stone, nobody bats an eyelash. They think the newfound determination in her eyes is simply the same one they feel. No one even suspects that it might be because she has a dark suspicion about what lies ahead, and that if it's true, if she's right, then she cannot stand by and let anyone else walk unknowingly to their deaths.

_You've never hurt me. Ever._

She meets Steve's eyes on the platform, and they exchange silent reassurances that are genuine only on one end. She forces herself to smirk.

"See you in a minute."

The corner of his mouth ticks up, Natasha's heart skips a little, and with one last pang of regret, they're gone.

Vormir is freezing, and as she treks up the side of the mountain she lets herself believe that she was wrong. _Maybe it'll be fine._ She cracks a joke that makes Clint smile. _Maybe it's just nerves._ Clint trips over a rock and she laughs. _Maybe it's nothing._

It's not nothing. The expected dread comes, but the shock and surprise do not.

She made a decision, years ago, and she has come to the end of the line.

_You've never hurt me. Ever._

It wasn't true then, and it won't be true now.

She fights Clint without any real fear of losing, because her mind has been made up about this for weeks, and the universe is no match for Natasha Romanoff on a mission. Her body moves automatically, vaulting off the side of the cliff and slipping a hook into Clint's suit before she even really has a chance to think.

It doesn't matter, because dwelling on the past is not what she does, and as she falls she is only grateful for the time that she had. Grateful for the autonomy that has been returned to her.

And if there is any regret, it is only that he will never hear her last words, that her parting message to him will be lost in the wind forever.

_You've never hurt me_, she whispers into the darkness. _Ever._


	2. all of my heroes die all alone

_**from anonymous: would you do one when nat turns out to be alive and meets old man steve?**_

For Steve Rogers, regret comes in many forms.

It has come in achingly familiar eyes, empty of recognition; it has been gray hair and withered hands and a casket too hard against his skin. It has haunted him through a voice too full of anger for its frail, debilitated owner.

Today, regret shows up in the form of a red-haired superspy, knocking almost hesitantly on his door.

His heart almost falls out of his body when he sees her through the peephole, and his hand is shaking so badly it takes him three tries to open the door.

He lets himself believe, for a moment, as his fingers slide against the doorknob, that it might not be true—that it _can't_ be true—but then the door opens and he'd know those eyes _anywhere_ and his breath stops in his throat.

Natasha, for all that it's worth, is far less shaken at the sight of him. He thinks there was a bit of hope in her gaze when he saw her face through the eyehole, but as he drinks in the sight of her face he sees that there is nothing but a wistful sadness.

"Hi," she says softly, and his knees almost buckle at the sound of her voice.

His brain has surely short-circuited, because his mouth opens but nothing comes out.

The ghost of a smile flickers at the corners of her lips, and he forces himself to speak. "You—you're supposed to be—they told me you were—"

"Dead," she guesses dryly. "Why, because I threw myself off a cliff?"

"I saw your body," he says hoarsely. "I went, I buried it, I—"

"Cried on it," she says, her voice tinged with forced humor. "The Skull told me."

He chokes out a short laugh, and she smiles slightly, but her eyes are still roving over his face like she can't quite believe what she's seeing.

"Do you, um, do you want to come in?"

She nods, he moves aside, and before his brain has a chance to catch up, he's sitting at his kitchen table with someone he'd buried both decades and days earlier.

Steve passes her a glass of water, and she takes it with a murmur of thanks.

"You bought me that glass," he says, in a brave attempt at normalcy. "Remember?"

She snorts into the glass. "Technically, SHIELD bought you this glass. I just picked it out and forced you to watch as I redecorated your entire apartment."

"I helped! I built three bookshelves, how _dare_ you—"

She grins, he feels his heart soar, and just like that, they're back.

Except they're not, really, because she's supposed to be at the bottom of a cliff and as much as seeing her makes his heart feel like it's about to explode, she's _not supposed to be here_ because if he'd known he would have—he wouldn't have—

"So," he says, forcing himself away from that train of thought, "How, um—how did you—"

She shrugs, setting the glass back down on the table. "I don't know, exactly. Schmidt didn't either. But it wasn't—I mean, I didn't have to dig myself out of the grave you made me. I just appeared back on that cliff. Bruce caught me up after he recovered from the heart attack he almost had when I appeared on that platform—seems like it could've been any number of things. Or maybe a combination of a few."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

He looks at her, watches her stare at the glass in her hands, and tries to accept the fact that she is here, in his kitchen. In some ways, everything feels right again—but in most ways, everything is so completely wrong.

"Nat—"

"You went back," she says quietly.

Something starts burning in the back of his throat, just as it had so long ago, as he'd told Bucky what he planned to do, voice faltering every few sentences. It is a feeling strikingly similar to shame, Steve thinks, but somehow even worse, and suddenly Steve feels an inexplicable urge to defend himself, to explain things.

"I—yes, I did, but it wasn't—I mean, yes, I stayed with Peggy, briefly, but it was mostly me fixing all the timelines we'd messed up."

Natasha gives a single, short nod. "Couldn't stand by and watch all the bad things happen."

"No, so I lived through all of them—stopped as much as I could, fixed the things I could—"

"Right," she says flatly. "That would explain the visible aging."

"Um, yeah," he says, trying to read her expression. "So—"

She looks up, meeting his eyes, and a thrill runs down Steve's spine. She's always been able to see right through him, more than anyone else ever could, and it is clear that his surface-level story is not going to hold up.

It has been a long, long time since he has been on the receiving end of that piercing gaze.

When she speaks, her voice is sharp, and the understanding lying delicately underneath it is not enough to stem the pang of hurt that Steve feels at her words.

"The Steve Rogers I knew didn't run from things."

"I couldn't stand it," he snaps. "I couldn't—I didn't want to live in this world and do the work by myself when there should've been someone beside me. I couldn't handle it. The only thing I could think about during that last fight was that we were _missing_ someone. That _I_ was missing someone."

His jaw clenches as he looks down at his hands, wrapped tightly around his glass. "There was no way I could've lived the rest of my life like that. I figured that if I went back, I could at least convince myself that it was something I was meant to do alone anyway, that it was a job for me and only me. But the Avengers, or whatever it becomes now—I couldn't be a part of that."

"The Avengers anchored you to this world," Natasha says softly.

"No," he retorts, almost angrily. "_You _did. I was _drowning_, Natasha. And I hadn't even realized you were the only thing keeping me afloat."

Steve looks up, blinking furiously to keep tears from falling. "Call me weak, think me pathetic. But the truth is, I couldn't live in a world without you. And I didn't know what to do about it."

Tears have formed in her eyes, and he feels a sudden rush of anger at the universe, at fate, at everything that has brought them to this moment.

He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. "It just—it shouldn't have been you."

"No," she says, her voice low. "It could only have been me."

"Why?" he asks, and they both wince as his voice cracks. "Why, Nat? why—"

"Because—because I figured it out. I knew what was waiting for us, and I couldn't just—"

"You _knew_?"

"It was an educated guess, but I was pretty sure—"

"You _knew?_ And you didn't tell me?"

"I couldn't," she whispers, and the pain in her voice sends a fissure through his heart. "I couldn't, Steve, and I think you know why."

He stares at her, trying to focus through the tears that have started to cloud his vision, and as he swallows the pain in his chest, he realizes that he _does_ know.

"Natasha—"

"You would've done the same thing," she says miserably.

"I know," he says heavily, swiping his thumb across the glass beneath his fingers. "I know."

He hesitates. "But if I'd gone—if you'd stayed—you were always stronger than me, you wouldn't have gone back, and now—"

"Don't," she says, shaking her head. "Don't do that. There was no way either of us could've known. And we both have too many regrets to start living in them now."

He heaves a shaky, trembling sigh, and Natasha stands.

She wipes a hand across her eyes, giving him a watery smile and taking a long, steadying breath. "I should get going, actually—I came here first, so not everyone knows I'm back—"

"Oh," he says, standing much too quickly, "Oh, yeah, of course, everyone'll be so happy to see you—"

"I'll be back, of course—"

"Yeah," he says, a little too cheerfully. "Of course. I'll see you soon."

She gives him a small smile before heading towards the door, and he watches her leave for a half-second before jolting to his senses and following.

She pauses when she's halfway through the doorway, turning to look back at him.

"It's okay," she says softly. "Really."

He forces himself to smile. "Yeah."

And in some ways, Steve supposes, it is. She's here, now, and maybe that's all he can ask for—after all, his life has been a story of almosts, a collection of maybes.

He was foolish, perhaps, to think it could end any differently.

She closes the door behind her.

**Notes:**

if the russos and m&m can't come up with a coherent explanation for the way the soul stone works then i don't need to either fight me


	3. phantom faces at the window

The air feels different as they eat at Sam's table.

Natasha's wolfing down eggs and waffles like she hasn't eaten in days, and as Steve works slowly through his own heaping breakfast plate, he wonders if she notices it too.

It's lighter, somehow, like their conversation in the guest room had cleared some of the unspoken fog between them. And despite everything, despite the metaphorical bomb about HYDRA infiltrating SHIELD and the literal bomb that had nearly killed both of them, he feels more secure about their partnership than ever before.

He wonders, as they shoo Sam out of the kitchen and wash the dishes side-by-side, just what it could become. If putting more out in the open could help it reach its full potential, whatever that might be.

"You asked me, earlier," he ventures, clearing his throat, "Who the woman in that picture was."

The sponge stills in her hand.

"Her name was Peggy Carter."

Natasha turns the faucet off before turning to look at him. "I know," she says, almost hesitantly. "But who was she to you?"

There is a moment of silence before he answers. "She wasn't—not a girlfriend, really. A first love, maybe. But I went in the ice before anything could happen, so—"

"That's rough," she says softly.

"I think it's mostly painful because of what she represents, you know? She's always going to be my biggest _what if_—what if I hadn't crashed? What if I'd found another way? What if I had lived through the sixty years I slept through?"

He sighs. "I guess I just—I wasn't ready to say goodbye. To that world, to that life, to her."

A faint, sad smile makes its way onto her face.

"No," she says. "We never are."

He meets her eyes, and something shifts in his gut as he does.

"Did you ever have something like that?"

"Yeah," she says, almost wearily, as she turns back toward the sink. "SHIELD."

Steve is standing on a bridge, gazing at the endless expanse of water before him, when she comes to find him.

He does not return the small smile she gives him.

"If you're going to tell me that I might have to kill him," he says shortly, "You can save it. Sam's already given me that speech."

"I'm not," she murmurs. "I just wanted to say—I'm sorry. About Bucky."

Steve sighs, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry he almost shot your shoulder off."

Natasha shrugs, leaning forward to rest her arms on the railing. "You're not the only one he means something to, you know."

He looks over at that, watching her study the water in front of them. He wonders if the scar that is forming on her shoulder will match the one on her abdomen, if it will be as painful a reminder to her as it is to him.

"You went to the museum," he guesses.

"A while ago, but yeah."

"Learn anything?"

Her gaze flickers briefly toward him before she answers. "Some. Not about me, but about who he used to be. It helped me make sense of the James I knew, I guess."

He hums, and he lets the silence linger between them for a moment before speaking again.

"I wasn't ready to say goodbye, back then. And I would rather not have to now, either."

"Yeah," she says softly. "Me either."

He tries not to sob as Natasha walks up the aisle toward him, her footsteps echoing in the empty chamber.

It is hauntingly terrible, Steve thinks, that a room used for a commemoration of life just moments ago could empty out so quickly.

She opens her mouth to say something, but Steve suddenly feels an overwhelming urge to speak first, to do something other than recall the way that casket felt against his hands.

"When I came out of the ice," he says, trying to control the shake in his voice, "I thought everyone I'd known was gone. Then I found out she was alive, and—I was just lucky to have her."

The corner of her mouth ticks up into a small, comforting smile. "She had you back, too."

His jaw clenches as he looks down at the floor, and she shifts in front of him.

"After everything that happened with SHIELD, during my little hiatus—I went back to Russia and tried to find my parents."

His heart gives a small, dull lurch as he looks up.

Natasha gives her head a little shake, and a stone drops in his stomach. "Two little gravestones by a chain-linked fence. I pulled some weeds and left some flowers."

She exhales shakily, and he waits for her to finish. "I'm just trying to say—we have what we have when we have it."

Her voice is thin, with both her own pain and his, and suddenly he is done talking about this.

"Who else signed?" he asks brusquely, trying to ignore the hurt that flashes through her eyes.

She sighs, and he feels slightly guilty at the relief that comes with her lack of protest. "Tony, Rhodey, Vision."

"Clint?"

"Says he's retired," she says flatly, and her eyes flick downward in a way that tells Steve she may be less than happy with that decision.

He looks briefly towards the door, trying to delay their march towards the inevitable destination of this conversation.

"Wanda?"

"TBD," she says, a sardonic edge to her voice, and he _hates_ that she can read him so well.

"You know, I'm off to Vienna," she continues, her voice deliberately casual. "There's plenty of room in the jet."

He gives a heavy, tortured sigh, and she takes a step toward him.

"Just because it's the path of least resistance doesn't mean it's the wrong path," she says quietly. "Staying together is more important than how we stay together."

Steve looks up, meeting her eyes, and he knows that she isn't just talking about the Avengers.

There was a time he would've given almost anything for that offer.

"But…what are we giving up to do it?"

She sighs, sad but not surprised, and he tries to ignore the pain that shoots through his chest.

"I'm sorry, Nat." He swallows, agonizingly aware of the finality his words bring. "I can't sign it."

Her eyes are disarmingly clear as she gives him a small, resigned smile, tilting her head slightly. "I know."

"Well, then, what are you doing here?"

She rolls her eyes, and the familiarity of the sight almost makes him recant his decision right then and there.

"I didn't want you to be alone."

It occurs to him, as she wraps him in her arms, that the choice he has made is not costless, either—and the fact that he is giving her up is too excruciating to think about.

So he tightens his arms around her, letting his unspoken words hover around them, and mumbles into her hair.

"I wasn't ready to say goodbye." _And I'm not ready to say goodbye to you._

"I know," she murmurs, her breath soft against his neck. "I know."

They find their way back to each other, miraculously, and Steve promises himself he will never stop being grateful for it.

This promise becomes more and more difficult to keep as time passes, as their friends disappear along with half the universe and the ones that don't get snapped do too.

Their worlds have always had their fair share of pain, but the lining of hope and comfort they used to bring each other seems harder and harder to find.

He attempts to conjure up some semblance of it when he walks in on her crying, because Natasha has cried more in the past few years than she has in her entire life and every one of her tears sends a jolt of anger through his body.

"I used to have nothing," she says hoarsely. "But then I got this. This job, this family. And I was better because of it."

She swallows thickly. "And even though—even though they're gone, I'm still trying to be better."

"You _are_ being better."

"I let myself get attached," she whispers. "I wasn't ready to say goodbye."

"Nobody was."

She doesn't answer, so he tries again, forcing some humor into his voice. "I think we both need to get a life."

She cracks a slightly teary smile, and the fissure in his heart heals a little bit. "You first."

Time, as it turns out, is his primary source of pain.

It is time that took him from Peggy, and time that takes Peggy from the world.

It is time that robs him and Natasha from developing whatever it is they have into whatever it is it could be, time that forces them to jump from motel to motel instead of spending time in the state-of-the-art facility he knows she deserves. And once they return to that facility, it is the time that fills their lives with pain rather than joy.

It is time that finally manages to do what master assassins, Nazi organizations, and one hundred and seventeen world governments failed to do—it is time that fully, irrevocably, takes Natasha from him. With her, it takes every semblance of hope he had for finding a life in the messy, once-beautiful world he thought he might someday build a home in.

_Timing is everything_, as the saying goes, and maybe it is—but _god,_ he wishes it wasn't.

The timing of the funeral is really something, too, because the sun is out and the lake is beautiful and Steve could not hate it more. He hates the way his eyes burn during everyone's speeches, hates the way his fist clenches in an effort to stem the audible sobs wracking his body. He hates the sympathetic pats and murmurs that he barely notices, hates the pity in everyone's eyes as he stands and walks to take his place at their makeshift podium.

He hates that he can trace the ghosts of her footsteps on this very deck, hates that he has somehow once again cheated time and she has not.

Tomorrow, he knows, they will return to the job at hand, and he will fight alongside his friends, because that is the only thing he knows how to do and he will _not_ let her sacrifice be in vain. At the moment, however, he knows nothing but grief, pain, and an all-consuming hatred for the concept of time.

His hands shake as he takes a deep breath, trying to collect himself before he speaks.

"Natasha meant a lot to me," he says, letting his eyes shut briefly. "And I wasn't ready to say goodbye."


End file.
